I Tried Living Like Blake Lively, and It Was Nerve-Racking, yet Triumphant

I have very little in common with Blake Lively, biographically speaking. She is female; she is a famous actress; she has been on the cover of Vogue three times. Meanwhile, I am male; I am not a famous actor; and I . . . have eaten at Chipotle this week three times. We are roughly the same age, however, and as such, I feel, in a certain way, I have “grown up with” Blake. I watched her debut in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants at about the same time as I grappled with moving to a different city from my own cadre of teenage best friends (I definitely did not excessively cry throughout the entire last third of the film, no way!); and I religiously tuned in to Gossip Girleach week during my first years living in New York (every week believing, even if just for a moment, that all my problems could be solved with a well-chosen clothing item). The way in which everything seemed to come so easily for Blake held a certain appeal and fascination to me. She wanted to star in a prestige Oscar-y movie, so she got herself a role in The Town; she liked Florence and the Machine, so she got Florence Welch as a best friend. Blake was a continual topic of conversation in my life; a search for “blake lively” in my Gmail inbox garners 423 results.

But Blake’s latest venture, the creation of a lifestyle Web site, seemed . . . difficult for me to relate to. Titled “Preserve,” the site is, as Vogueput it, “part digital monthly magazine, part e-commerce venture, part video blog.” There is a central, yet hazy, focus on building things with your own hands and engaging with the world (“I’m hungry for experience,” Blake writes in her editor’s letter). The aesthetic of Preserve is—perhaps surprisingly, given Blake’s California Girl sunshine-and-cupcakes vibe—quite dark, in a Southern gothic, folk-rocker kind of way. The men featured have tattoos and greased hair; the women look more Vanessa Abrams than Serena van der Woodsen; the food appears dreamy and overripe. If Goop is a Taylor Swift song, Preserve is a Paramore ballad.

This splashy debut of Preserve, and Blake’s attempt to reposition herself as a Martha- or Gwyneth-like lifestyle guru, took me aback. It seemed that Blake may have diverged from a path I could identify with; in meandering through the articles and features on the site, I had trouble finding myself anywhere in Preserve. I am not a person who can throw together a whimsical summer barbecue. The closest I come to “baking” is when I re-assemble store-bought cupcakes that have come apart in the bag. I have never re-purposed a wooden stump into a chic stool. But, I wondered, was there anything I could learn from Preserve? Did Blake—as I had always suspected, ever since studying her expression in that picture of her biking in a bucket hat with Leonardo DiCaprio—know something about me that even I didn’t know? Using the pages of Preserve as my religious text, I decided to spend a day attempting to live a life of handcrafted, homemade authenticity as best I could; I thought, perhaps, this could result in the sense of bliss and calm that Blake appears to have found in her own picturesque life.

But how does someone on a first-name basis with at least three different Seamless deliverymen go about channeling the earthy, fanciful gracefulness that Blake’s site so enthusiastically celebrates?

I knew that if I wanted to reach the Preserve plateau, I had to look the part. So I began my odyssey in the “Shop” section of the site, looking for the right outfit for my day of Preserve-ing. I settled on a $132 “Twombly crew” T-shirt, pictured on a LaBeouf-ian model (the description of the shirt read: “distressed/destroyed/holes”). For an accessory, I ordered a $70 printed bow tie which promised to make me “the stocky sailor to swoon over” (all of the items for sale on Preserve are made by third-party vendors, artisans purportedly handpicked by Blake). I felt somewhat deflated when my choices arrived a few days later in an ordinary, unremarkable brown box (where’s the lavender ombre ribbon and tobacco-scented wrapping paper, Blake??), but, my outfit in hand, I felt eager and prepared to begin my Preserve journey.

To start my day, I tore the T-shirt, which unarguably resembled a dirty kitchen rag, out of its packaging. “This single piece of cotton is meant to be lived in, loved in, tattered, worn in, sworn in, destroyed, sweat in, slept in. let it become you,” I was instructed, via a small note card. I let the shirt become me, and felt immediately like an extra in a Mumford & Sons music video.

Author Josh Duboff attempts to keep his spirits up as he realizes there is no way he is going to be able to tie this Preserve bow tie., Justin Bishop

I knew, from what I had gleaned from the Web site, that I needed to embark upon a folksy activity that would make use of my hands in some way. My options, as a resident of Manhattan, were limited; my first idea (scavenging for “found art” in my neighborhood) almost resulted in a Whole Foods employee Tasering me. Eventually, recalling a Preserve feature on the art of letter writing, I decided to take the subway to a posh stationery shop in the West Village, where I asked the employee for her most “authentic” paper. She looked at me as if I had just told her I was Ariana Grande, before retrieving a plain, cream paper with a gold, beveled edge. “Is this for a play?” she asked, as she rang me up. “In a way,” I said. Her eyes moved down to the rips in my shirt and she gave me the look of someone who has just entered a subway car that smells inexplicably awful.

When I got home, I began writing a letter, addressed to my mother (it began “It’s strange that I’m writing you a letter instead of an e-mail, huh?”). As it turned out, the stationary store employee had been quite prescient; the predominant sense I had when writing the letter was that I was a character in a play, or one of those actors who plays a letter-writing stand-in for a president or dignitary during a voice-over in a historical documentary (I imagined Paul Giamatti’s voice narrating the words as I scribbled them). I will acknowledge, though, upon sealing my missive, a feeling of achievement and completion that . . . well, let’s just say I can’t remember that feeling (or any feeling, really) accompanying the sending of any e-mails I’ve dashed off recently.

With my letter-writing achievement behind me, I was ready to tackle the centerpiece of the Preserve lifestyle: it was time to throw a dinner party.

Now, I cook about as frequently as I’d imagine Blake Lively and Leighton Meester text each other (which is to say: once a year at most, usually on a birthday). But, despite my inadequacies when it comes to cooking, I was determined to prepare a full-fledged Preserve meal. Browsing the site, I looked for the most straightforward recipes. An experienced chef (or even an only moderately experienced one) would no doubt find the three-ingredient chicken wings recipe—comprised of chicken wings, salt, and a barbeque sauce available from Blake’s store (for $25 a bottle)—pretty basic, but it struck me as, given my experience level, challenging but achievable. I then decided I’d make, as a specialty cocktail, the “Strawberry Army/Navy” drink recipe—featuring bitters, gin, and an exotic-sounding Orgeat syrup.

My recipes selected, I found an available kitchen to cook in (as my studio apartment only has seating for multiple people if you count the bed as a seat), and I schlepped the ingredients over, procured from three different stores. I decided I would dress up for the occasion, so I put on my bow tie—or, rather, I tried to put on my bow tie. After about nine YouTube tutorial-aided failed attempts to tie it, the anxiety and doubt really started to come flooding in. What was I doing? I was not a host. I was not Blake Lively. None of us are Blake Lively. I had run around New York all day in a deluded attempt to put together a chicken wings recipe for friends of mine who would be expecting to be fed a full, reasonable dinner. I was sweating through my ridiculous torn-up $132 shirt. Dejected, I tossed the bow tie on the counter, giving up. I felt like a fraud, an imposter, a Georgina Sparks. Though Preserve espouses a life that is sun-kissed and idyllic and effortless and filled with laughter and love and light, in this moment—waiting for my friends to arrive for a dinner I felt only 15 percent sure would be edible—I felt less like an effervescent, glowing nymph and more like a goat who had fallen off a trail into some brambles. A goat who couldn’t tie a bow tie.

The author channels the Preserve spirit. He's thinking, “What expression would Blake Lively make if she were posing in this chair right now?”, Justin Bishop

At this low, low point, my friend Tarik, an excellent cook, arrived to help guide me through my preparations (every Blake needs a Martha guardian angel) and, by the time my friends Lauren and Liz arrived, the food was nearly ready. Lauren and Liz—whom I had told only that I was doing a “project for work”—were both highly skeptical of the entire enterprise: my uncharacteristic foray into the culinary arts, my sudden interest in hospitality, and, naturally, my ridiculous outfit. Lauren sniffed the air and asked if I was making spiced meat, with what can only be characterized as an expression of mild fear. Upon regarding my shirt, Liz picked at one of the rips and questioned, “Why are you wearing a prop from The Hunger Games?”

I did not feel particularly confident as I presented the cocktails—while I had succeeded in procuring strawberries for muddling and Orgeat syrup, which I learned was basically just almond syrup—making them was something of a challenge given there were no quantities specified for the cocktail on the site (although since I made the recipe it has been updated with actual proportions). Without anything resembling a proper stirring apparatus, I mixed the drinks by . . . pouring them back and forth between small drinking glasses, which is how Blake does it, too, I’m sure. Surprisingly, though, the concoction went over quite well; “it barely tastes like alcohol,” we commented, which was especially surprising given it had seemed nearly every ingredient involved was alcohol-based.

I then brought out the chicken wings, doused in Blake’s sauce. (I had modified the wings for oven preparation, given my lack of an accessible charcoal grill.) At first I thought my guests were playing some sort of mean prank, as their initial response was one of silent, focused chewing. They’re about to gag and spit them up and make me order them pizza, I assumed. But this was not the case, as the three of us ended up working through the wings in a matter of minutes, licking our fingers mechanically as we went, like efficient sprinters. We all agreed that if the sauce were an Uber driver, we’d give it a 5.0, no question (the kind where you press 5.0 immediately and don’t even entertain the possibility of a 4.0). As I cleared everyone’s plates, I told Lauren and Liz I was ready—like a Gossip Girl character in the final act of an episode—to reveal my secret. I explained they had just unknowingly enjoyed a Preserve dinner party. “Ugh, I wish I had known,” Lauren said. “I would have taken more pictures.”

I rewarded them for their patience and good spirit with ice cream slathered in the Preserve all-natural $10.50 hot fudge, which we all thoroughly enjoyed. We reflected that the food had actually been pretty good; the drink as refreshing as air conditioning after returning from a summer evening run; the fudge the kind that reminds you of sleepovers at friends’ houses in high school (oh God, I am starting to write like a Preserve copywriter). As I started to clear plates, I felt almost, for the first time, like a natural host. As I laughed at one of my friend’s jokes while storing strawberries in a Ziploc bag, it was like I was the sort of adult Nancy Meyers makes movies about. I was shocked to realize, when my friends said their goodbyes, that our leisurely evening had lasted almost four hours, a feat rarely achieved at most crowded Manhattan restaurants where hosts often give you disdainful looks if you linger at your table for longer than 30 seconds after paying the bill.

Trying to live like Blake Lively had been exhausting and expensive, but also, I had to admit, rewarding. While I will not be sipping apple whiskey out of a bespoke Mason jar anytime soon, nor foregoing text messages for handwritten missives, I did appreciate the journey outside of my comfort zone. Blake had shown me I had abilities I wasn’t even aware I possessed. I might not be able to tie a bow tie, but I could put together a solid meal, I could wear a mechanic’s sweat cloth masquerading as a T-shirt around town and not feel insecure about it, and I could say things like “Oh, no, don’t get up” and “Let me get you a different glass” with convincing host-like warmth. Back in my apartment, I received a text from a friend whom I had invited to the dinner but who hadn’t been able to make it: “SO sorry I missed it! do u think you’ll do it again??” I responded, “sure why not!” (followed by a peace sign emoji), and, to my own surprise, realized I actually meant it.

Josh DuboffJosh Duboff is a VF.com staff writer, based in New York, who covers entertainment and culture.